Social Networks Gaining on Internet Portals 96
Compete writes "We have some interesting analysis on how Social Networking sites compare to portals. From a sample size of around 2 million US people, Compete concludes that social networking sites are quickly approaching the traffic level of the big portals like Google and Yahoo. They liken the growth of SNS to email in the 90's. Their key findings:
1. In June, 2 out of every 3 people online visited a social networking site
2. Since January 2004, the number of people visiting or taking part in one of the top online social networks has grown by over 109%
3. Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants — Google and Yahoo"
In the minority again (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it. Maybe I'm just too old, but they hold practically zero interest for me. Too old or just too busy (but not to busy for
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
And can someone tell me what makes a site a "social networking site"? Youtube.com was on the list, and I thought they just hosted streaming video.
Oh, and FP again (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly, even though my
Re:Oh, and FP again (Score:2, Funny)
Obligatory Breakfast Club Quote (Score:2)
"So it's social. Demented and sad, but social."
--Bender
Re:Obligatory Breakfast Club Quote (Score:2)
Re:In the minority again (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In the minority again (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Me too..I'm a bit older age wise, but, I do like to do lots of new things, and am always interested in new stuff out there, but, the myspace thing really doesn't hold any appeal to me. I mean, I usually run my own webservers, so if I want to throw content out there, I do it form there....
Maybe I'll look into myspace again, but, it just seemed to me a place
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Yeah it's almost as if people want to socialise on the Internet. How odd.
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
I have seen forums who boast 25,000 registered members who's primary clientele is furry anime porn lovers. To each his own... the thing that I find interesting about the Social Networking sites being in the news is the new revenue potentials... ad-based as well as finding ways to merge themselves to offer lots of content, user generated as well as corp-generated.
Whether or not they your your thing - there is a market for everything.
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
Re:In the minority again (Score:4, Interesting)
Then again, maybe you're not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations, you're using a social networking site! They're not all MySpace, you know.
Yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2)
I have been touched by his noodly appendage!
None, but then again, we try to avoid others' noodly appendages.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:1)
Re:Then again, maybe you're not. (Score:2)
Indeed. Their definition of what constitutes a social networking site was a little broad for my tastes.
I was also surprised that http://www.linkedin.com/ [linkedin.com] wasn't mentioned, since that seems to be the more 'adult' version of MySpace. Practically everyone I know via employment has a LinkedIn account.
Re:Then again, maybe you're not. (Score:2)
So much for that false dichotomy. Or maybe
Re:In the minority again (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there a growing crowd of aging people on slashdot that is either not motivated with following the herd or just not for new technologies and very doubtful of the future (For example, every time a new technology is mentioned we get someone yelling about "Where are those flying cars you promised?! We'll never see this in 20 years!")
Then we get those who often complain about Flash video when every knows the net is being dragged screaming and kicking to use flash video technology. Its just the way things are moving.
The same with social sites. Personally, I'm an old live journal user (well if you think 2001 is old) and would never blog on myspace, but yet I keep a my space site just so I can keep a presence there.
I'm late twenties almost thirties so I'm kind of old for that age group, but I can't tell you how many people from my old high school have contacted me through my space. Its endearing if nothing else, but as far as spending more than 5 minutes on the site per week, I seriously doubt I would ever do that.
So the point being is that it appears that most technology nerds on slashdot (including me) aren't really up on technology trends as much as we should. Maybe we don't care... Or maybe we cling to are old ancient technologies and refuse to give up the ghost.
Still we shouldn't scoff at it and nay say because it obviously these things are bigger than all of us combined like it or not. It's like the old war generals saying cavalry still trumps everything on the battlefield only to get them run over by those new fangled tanks.
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Speaking of which...
Re:In the minority again (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously - The other dimension of it is that to be an effective Myspace participant you have to put a ton of information about yourself - Pics, where you went to school, your job, your thoughts, and -best of all-, everyone you have contact with. I don't think it's a secret to anyone here that Slashdotters are acutely averse to letting a lot of detailed info about themselves out, let alone posting it voluntarily. This is especially true since we know that the NSA is trolling MySpace [securitypronews.com] to build a map of the social networks of anyone they spider. Which is probably everyone^N^N^N^N^N^N^N^N^N only terrorists.
Re:In the minority again (Score:3, Funny)
You know..that is another reason maybe I'm not 'out there' on these type sites. While I try not to wear my tin foil hat too tightly, I do like to keep as much personal info off the public web as possible. I figure I'm already in too many databa
Re:In the minority again (Score:1, Funny)
Is there any cause more noble?
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
One of the whole points (and main benefits, for me) is that the type of person you see and interact with on "social networking" sites are those people in your social network. So yeah, maybe I prefer the "average Slashdotter" to the "average MySpacer or LiveJournaler", but that's irrelevant, because I don't have to deal with the average MySpacer or LiveJournaler. I do, however, have to put up with every troll and flamebaiter out on Slashdot
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Then the search engines came along... Webcrawler anyone?
Re:In the minority again (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't consider the popularity of social networking sites to be a technology trend. Sure, there's technology involved, but there's little technically new. This trend is social, and that's why many
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
For what it's worth, I tend to think it's a social issue instead of a technology issue. It's the same technology slashdoters use ( and develop ) everyday. It's just packaged in a way that's not useful to us or not appealing to us.
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Now, how people end up spending hours a day on MySpace I just can't fathom. It's really not that interesting, and some of the profiles there are enough to give you migraines with the horrendous color schemes (yellow text over a
Nah, you just have no social life. (Score:2)
I predict that the preponderance of non users will be substantially higher than 30% amongst Slashdot users.
Re:Nah, you just have no social life. (Score:1)
You're not far off, I have a family (Score:2)
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Re:In the minority again (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are, social networking sites can seem pretty neat since there are a lot of people there, some of who are interesting.
What's really appealing about myspace is that although most people wildly misuse their "space", it is a place where they can be creative and put out things that they like. Those things are not what most programmers think they should like, but the point is that they can be in control and there's plenty of help available to make their profile look as they want it to.
Human beings in general seem to be more interested in whether something looks "cool" than whether you can read it or not. And that's fine, because they are people and they are expressing themselves. And on myspace, it's relatively easy to find them, which is where I think social networking has a huge advantage over standalone blogs.
Someone who put hours and hours into breaking myspace has a pretty interesting perspective on it. Funny, too. I'm Popular. [www.namb.la]
I'm doing my own site, aimed at more mature people than myspace, but it's not ready yet. To show social networking with an adult flair, I consider my best competition to be Tribe [tribe.net]. It used to have adult profiles and
D
Re:In the minority again (Score:1)
Actually I'd disagree - these sites are very good for interacting with the people you already know (as opposed to say here on Slashdot, where I don't know anyone). I use LiveJournal a lot, but I'm not bothered at all about meeting anyone new there.
Re:In the minority again (Score:2)
Or maybe, just maybe - You aren't their target demographic, or it's not just something you are interested in!
I the quoted comment everytime MySpace is mentioned on Slashdot - where did the idea arise that every site is for everyone?
Re: (Score:1)
>>Shudders.
50 million? (Score:1)
-Raseri
friends (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:friends (Score:2)
Re:friends (Score:2)
What the...? (Score:1)
Re:What the...? (Score:2)
People have been doing that for years. (Score:5, Insightful)
The social networking sites offer a few other features, but in the end it's just people wanting to talk with each other.
Re:People have been doing that for years. (Score:2)
Like the BBS (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the interviews talk about how impersonal the internet is, the fact that you might be one in 50,000 people on a newsgroup versus one of 100 or 200 on a BBS. The fact is, before myspace-type sites, it was pretty difficult to create a small online community of your friends without some decent computer skills. Sure, there was IRC, but it was difficult to create static content there. Sure, there were search sites like Classmates.com but no one ever went to them.
Myspace is really quite primitive, as everyone knows. It's just a simple database blog. Where it shines is the search feature in combination with the ease of custom publishing. You can search for old friends, search by hometown, etc. And with the inclusion of music and video clips, it's a whole multimedia experience. I think that it's the closest thing to the old personal community feeling the BBS had than anything else.
Sure, there's a lot missing, but I think that if someone were to look at the sucessful old BBS' and modeled a new "Social Networking" site after them (real time chat, files, message boards, multi-player games based on login, just more areas and features), it could be real successful in a hurry. MySpace just doesn't do enough. It's all anyone has right now, of course.
Re:Like the BBS (Score:2)
Re:Like the BBS (Score:2)
Thanks to spam... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's actually being measured? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would think that search engines would have many visitors daily (both unique & repeat), but the actual end-to-end traffic would be minimal & bursty in nature (individual searches). (In addition, one could say that things are really skewed, because if a search site does it's job well, the visitor will find what they need & be sent off site). With the SN sites, I would think people are logging in, digging through their various personal pages, as well as those who they're networking with. I would imagine that this would create a lot more traffic, but probably not from unique visitors. It's the same people who are logged in for long periods creating all the traffic.
In addition, they showed no real comparisons between actual traffic flows, bandwidth usage, unique visitors, repeat visitors, etc.
I agree that Social Networking is gonna continue to gain ground & will be (if it's not already) huge. But why is that being compared against the large scale search, data aggregation, and directed advertising companies.
Re:What's actually being measured? (Score:1)
Actually, they've got a long way to go (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but I find it hard to call this earth shattering.
Isn't MySpace a "social portal" (Score:1)
MySpace is their "social portal", but they jump to Google News for their "News Portal"...
Re:Isn't MySpace a "social portal" (Score:5, Funny)
WTF? What are you, eight years old? Since when is someone in their 20's "older"?
Damn kids. Get off my lawn!
The increase is driven by ... (Score:2)
It seems to me that the survey doesn't boost the cause for social networking, but leads to the opposite conclusion - that even the 10 largest social networking sites added together don't add up to the traffic seen by Yahoo or Google. Count me underwhelmed.
Spammers (Score:1)
Google and Yahoo "Portals"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google and Yahoo "Portals"? (Score:2)
Re:Google and Yahoo "Portals"? (Score:2)
Why shouldn't you go a little crazy? After all, the rest of the world is behind the times in dropping the definition that's been in use for years now, and adopting yours as the standard!
Slashdot = Myspace for nerds (Score:2)
Summarizing with a cat
Re:Slashdot = Myspace for nerds (Score:1)
So no, no <blink> any time soon. Besides, as geeks, we'd only use it for Schroedinger's Cat is <blink>not</blink> dead.
Re:Slashdot = Myspace for nerds (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot = Myspace for nerds (Score:2)
God! (Score:1)
Re:God! (Score:1)
Re:God! (Score:1)
Re:God! (Score:1)
Yeah, they tore down all the bars, nightclubs, shopping malls, libraries, arcades, parks, etc., etc., etc. in America. All gone. Every last one.
Re: (Score:1)
To my knowledge
Now if you want to talk shopping ma
SNS are in the fashion business (Score:2)
How about Social networking vs major news media? (Score:2)
Who cares? (Score:2)
Fuck, anyone who even uses the word "portal" anymore needs to have his ass kicked back to 1999.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
Top 10 vs. 1 (Score:2)
Well, sure, that's sounds impressive, until you RTFA and see that the support for that is that visitors to the top 10 "social networking" sites combined (including Google offering Blogger.com) are approaching the US traffic of Google or Yahoo! individually.
Of course, by the definition they use ("For this particular analysis we wanted to include sites where people create personal profiles with the opportunity to recei
MSN Messenger is the culprit (Score:2)
People use MSN Messenger. Lots of people. They see an orange star right beside a contact's name. They click the star and they see a "presentation card" window, that hilights that new content that has been added to myspace account, more specifically pictures.
So you se that your female contact has new pictures posted and them usually include her female friends!
No male adolescent user can re